How To Do Overhead Shoulder Presses To Help Shoulder Pain

Have you ever wondered about how to do an overhead press correctly without messing up your shoulders? I’ve gotten this question so much, especially from patients that have had rotator cuff tears or shoulder impingement problems. Oftentimes, they’ve seen their doctor, their physician and the physician, with good intent is recommended that they stop doing overhead presses.

But what they really don’t know is, that there’s a right way to do it that actually helps out shoulder problems. Which I’m going to show you today. I’m going to show you exactly how to do an overhead press correctly, so that you can help shoulder problems, rather than make them worse.

Now, there are three things I’m going to cover in this video. So pay close attention when I’m covering those. And if you are, if you’ve already been doing overhead presses, you might need to lower the weight, you might need to back off a bit to some very simple weights and just get the motion down correctly. So that you can learn how to do this the right way moving forward and incorporated into weight progressions that you’re going into moving forward.

Now, if you’re not a weightlifter, if you’re thinking oh, gosh, I don’t ever want to lift weights up over my head, that’s cool, too. What I want to just plant the seed of is that it is a good idea to maintain some decent strength, being able to lift weights up over your head or some sort of resistance up over your head.

The reason is, we’re designed to pick up things up overhead, that’s if you look at our genetic design as humans, we’re bipedal meaning we stand on two feet, we’re designed to lift things up overhead doesn’t mean that it has to be heavy, but you should maintain some strength. Otherwise, you’re going to run into some very common issues like rotator cuff tears, shoulder impingement issues, neck, arthritis, shoulder arthritis, there’s all kinds of things that can go into nerve problems, disk issues in the neck, I’ll stop.

But what I tell my patients here in the clinic that are coming with some sort of neck or shoulder problem is you’ve got to maintain your overhead, lifting strength just a little bit moving forward as you age, if you can do that, if you can be able to pick up 10, 15, maybe 20 or more pounds overhead for several times will be five to 10 times, you’re going to be in fantastic shape as you age over time.

Real quick, for those of you that don’t know me, my name is Dr. David Middaugh. I’m a specialist physical therapist from El Paso manual physical therapy.

Let me show you three big mistakes that people make when doing overhead lifts. The first huge mistake and you’ve got to correct this, it’s the most important thing to correct is not shrugging. what everybody thinks about whenever Do you need overhead press is that all the motion comes from the ball and socket joint of the shoulder that it’s all just the ball and socket moving up.

What people forget is that you’re shrugging muscles move your shoulder blades up, your shoulder blades actually have tons of motion, they can move up and down, they can roll forward and roll backwards, and they actually rotate this way. So they’ll rotate in this direction. And when you shrug, it kind of wants to rotate out.

But when you shrug and reach up, it rotates out quite a bit. So you’ve got to take advantage of that motion. And just real quick, let me give you the scientific reason for that the shoulder blade serves as the socket for the ball and socket joint. So if you shrug and rotate it up, it positions the socket like so in an overhead reach, which actually takes off a lot of stress from the rotator cuff tendons.

If you don’t shrug and rotate your shoulder, your shoulder blade, then the socket stays facing more sideways and it does upwards. And if you’re trying to pick up heavyweight, up overhead or even just lightweight, and you do that all the time, repetitively over time, you’re going to mess things up, that socket is going to be facing more outwards, and the ball is going to butt up against the top end of the socket, there’s a bone there called the acromion as part of the shoulder blade, and it starts to rub it. And that’s what tends to mess up our rotator cuff tendons and other tissues in the area over time.

That’s why these tariffs happen. But you shrug like I’m going to show you right now, you should be safe. And it actually will help you out over time. A secondary effect of this is you have to it as long as you’re keeping good neck stability, you have to keep your chin a little bit tucked in, I’ll tell you about that. You’re going to prevent neck problems as well.

You can hurt your neck, if you’re doing this appropriately. So watch my neck as well. Now without any weights. What I mean by this shrug is whenever your hands are coming up, so you’re going to pick up something up overhead. Once your hands are about face level, you need to start to struggle a little bit. So if you think about all the motion, you can go up and shrugging, that’s where you’re going to end up at the very top.

But when your hands are coming up to about face level, struggle a little and then keep shrugging more so that you’re maximally shrugged at the top. Now watch my head and my chin. It’s kind of down I’m not what I want to do, if I didn’t think about it is to do this right here. My chin would stick out my head would kind of look up a little bit. Some people want to go down.

Everybody’s got little different things they want to do. But what they all don’t do reflexively which we need to do. is just tuck it in like, you’re like you’re making a small double chin, you think about making a big, huge double chin, you’re doing like a little baby one, a mild one or a 25%. double chin is when it’s all people often.

So maintain that as you come up. Now, if you’re going to add weights to this, I’ve got some five pound weights here. So this is 10 total, you’d be doing the same thing, whether it’s hand weights, you know, dumbbells or plates like this, a medicine ball doesn’t matter, just the concepts the same, keep that chin down.

Once your hands are about face level begin to shrug. By the time you come all the way up, you should be shrugging all the way. And every time you do reps like that, you need to shrug.

If you look at people doing overhead lists, or if you look at yourself in the mirror, oftentimes what people do, if you look at the space between their neck and ear, right on the side of their head and neck right here, when they’re coming up, they don’t close this space much they what you want, what you should do, ideally is try to shove your shoulders up so high, because you’re shrugging that you don’t have much space there.

Now there’s genetic differences. Some people have been or next, where they their shoulders just don’t go that far. But you need to try to get it as far as you can even close that space as much as possible. If you’re doing that, then we know that you’re struggling adequately.

And you should feel it whenever you’re even with no weight. When you’re coming up, you should feel these shrugging muscles working, that’s a good sign, that’s good feedback, that you’re struggling enough on an overhead lift.

Now I’m going to do with a barbell with a heavier weight than a barbell here. This is 45 pounds here. So I personally like to do overhead lifts in the gym, I do Olympic lifting that involves some overhead lifting. And I’m thinking about this all the time. So grab the bar, and when you’re coming up, you’re shrugging all the way. Now, the next tips are going to be more for the people that like to exercise like to weight lift, or are looking to start to weight lift.

So if you’re not there yet, that’s okay, don’t worry. It’s okay. It’s okay to just stop here. And tune out or pay attention the video for the future. So at some point, maybe the distant future. But these are important things as well, especially as you’re going into heavier weightlifting up overhead. Going back to the barbell, using a wide grip is not good. And going back to the science of it and how the socket has to align properly.

Think about it, the wider that you are, you don’t give your sockets in the ball and socket joint a chance to go to face vertical as much as possible. You want to do that so that you can stack your bones on each other.

If you’re not stacking your bones on each other, then what your body is forced to do is put a lot of pressure a lot of force through the tendons and that’s what injures tendons over time, the more you can get vertical, which means your hands have to come closer together at the top, it’s going to be better for your shoulder joints.

Now this goes completely against what a lot of people have been taught. If they’ve been weightlifting, if you are an Olympic lifter out there, you’ve done weights through school through high school or you’ve gotten a trainer, you’ve paid a trainer some money, and they’ve shown you how to lift weights appropriately, they may have shown you to push Put your hands out why when doing an overhead lift.

This is especially common in CrossFit with Olympic lifting like a snatch is a type of exercise where you’re picking up a barbell from the ground and you’re coming up, they’ll tell you to grip the bar pretty wide typically. And when you come up, you’re right here and they don’t tell you to shrug because that’s not common knowledge. And it’s not. But before I go any further, it’s not the trainer’s fault. It’s, it’s just isn’t common knowledge.

So this isn’t something that people should know, necessarily. I mean, I’m trying to make it more common knowledge by doing videos like this. But what you have to understand if you’re watching this and is don’t feel offended or don’t feel like somebody was trying to withhold information from you.

Likely, if you’re your coach or your trainer, whoever it was that showed you how to lift weights overhead, they probably need to see this video as well to learn about how to do this better. So let me start with the barbell, what it’ll look like.

Oftentimes, people will grip kind of wide, right here, and then when they do that overhead lift or the part of the lift that’s overhead, they’ll be wide right here and you can see, I just can’t shrug as effectively. As if I had my hands closer together more like shoulder width apart. Now I can I can strike real good. But the wider you go, you just lose leverage.

You just don’t have a good angle, and you can’t use your struggling muscles as good. So get a wider grip. If you’re using dumbbells or do free weights weight not a barbell, it’s a lot more intuitive. Your body just wants to bring it in.

You just can’t hold it out at an angle very well. So make sense that when you’re holding a barbell like this yet a more narrow grip about a shoulder width apart grip, and there isn’t a perfect distance, you know, you don’t really want to measure it, there’s markings on the bar as well, where the rough part of the bar and smooth parts of the bar.

Some people go by that that’s fine if you want to use that. But there isn’t really a perfect measurement, you got it, you kind of have to just do it and feel it. See what it’s like to shrug wired doing an overhead lift, and adjust your grip accordingly so that you can find the best grip for yourself. Whenever you’re going into overhead lifting exercises.

Now, I’ve been a crossfitter. in the past, I’ve gone to several CrossFit gyms and I’ve modified my the way that I do weightlifting, obviously, whenever I’m doing snatches, or clean and jerks, or any sort of overhead press put overhead press on like push press, anything like that.

I’m more narrow than everybody else around me. And I’ve gotten asked here and there, you know, why are you doing it like that you should be wider. And I just tell them, yes, the way that works for me.

I just say something simple like that I don’t, especially being a specialist, physical therapist, you know, unless somebody asked me, I’m not going to go drop everything on them about why they should be doing it as well. They have to be ready to hear it. So there’s a couple people that are ready to hear it, I might share with them why trainers oftentimes want to know why.

But I just want you to know and be warned that if you go out to the gym, especially if you’re in a class setting like a CrossFit class, or you’re working with a coach or a trainer, you might share this video with them or just explain to them that you feel best doing it this way you feel good, you feel stronger, likely you will, you’ll feel like you can pick up more weight this way. And, and that works for you. And that’s okay, most people are willing to accept that just fine.

And the last bit that I want to give you here, the last problem that I see is that when doing overhead lifts, whether it’s with the barbell or with small weights, people don’t use your legs. And it doesn’t make sense from because especially if you’re the type that you’ve always done, you know, arm day, or upper body day and then leg day or lower body day, where you split up your workouts like that that’s a good approach, definitely.

So you can have a plan when you go to the gym. But what I want to tell you about doing these overhead presses is using your legs is incredibly important. Making the making the movement strict, so that you don’t use your legs, in my opinion is a very bad idea.

Let me tell you why the body uses tons of muscles, I mean at least a dozen muscles on each shoulder to get your arm up overhead. If you’re starting from down here or even lower, if you’re bringing the weights down from your hips or thighs all the way to here into here or just straight on up.

You’re using tons of muscles to do that. And in different zones of the lift different parts of the you know, wherever your hand or your shoulders at wherever the position of the joints at, you’re using a different muscle at this zone, about right here where your shoulders about 90 degrees relative to your body, you’re using a lot of rotator cuff muscle to do that rotator cuff muscles are relatively small muscles compared to like your deltoid muscles, which are the ones that the teardrop shape muscles that you see out here are your struggling muscles up here.

Those are much, much bigger and much more power generating muscles than the rotator cuff muscles. In truth rotator cuff muscles aren’t supposed to be super strong, their main job is to stabilize the ball against the socket, not to actually move it a whole lot. A lot of people think that they do rotation because of their name and they do they contribute to rotation.

But what they’re really doing is stabilizing the ball in the socket as the joint moves as it rotates, or flexes or does any sort of motion. It’s not intended to be the primary mover in rotation or any of the other motions. That’s why you have all these other big muscles. So the reason why I’m recommending using your legs when doing overhead presses is so that you can offload your rotator cuff muscles and use your other big muscles more so during the lift. And the results are phenomenal. I’ve helped patients do this all the time.

I’ve trained myself this way for years now. And I’ve gotten so much stronger, my overhead lift, I felt better throughout my whole body have never had any shoulder issues never come close to it, in fact, and I think it’s the way everybody should be lifting weights up overhead.

So just to explain what to do with using your legs over when doing an overhead lift. I’m going to put the bar down for a second. What you got to do is use your abs and your butt muscles. So if you’re doing let’s just talk about one exercise, a push press, which means you’re holding weights right here, and then you’re just coming up like so notice what I did there.

I did a little baby squat. And then I use the momentum of my squat. I’m straightening out my legs here by squeezing my butt and sucking in my abs. That little quick motion allows me to get out of here. Remember I said right here is where your rotator cuff muscles are being used a bit much So if you use your legs to kind of help you out with that motion, it offloads a rotator cuff.

And as you’re shrugging on the way up, you start to use your primary shoulder muscles that you’re supposed to be using to lift up overhead. So you might start with some lightweights, like I’ve got my five pounders right here, just to practice the motion. And you don’t have to do a big intense squat.

You can if you want, but what I recommend is just a tiny squat like a quarter squat a little bit, just basically bend your knees and hips a bit. And then when you come up, you’ve got to squeeze your butt muscles, and shrug, suck in your abs, but tighten shrug. When you come up here, your butt should be tight, you should feel like you’re pinching the cheeks together really good back there.

And in truth, whenever I’m doing this exercise in the gym, yeah, I get an upper body workout and I feel my my shoulder muscles appear my traps, Metro PCs, muscles get pretty tired. I also feel it in my butt, which isn’t a bad thing, right, you get your butt workout while doing your upper body workout. And it’s healthy for you, it’s the way that you should be lifting weights up overhead.

Because think about normal, everyday movement. If you go pick up something heavier, so you’re putting something away in a closet, or you’re doing some work around the house requires you to reach up overhead. It’s not just an arm motion, you’re stabilizing with every muscle in your body, your back muscles, your ab muscles, your thigh muscles, your butt muscles, down your feet, muscles should be working.

I oftentimes am talking to people about their foot muscles or toes, whenever they’re doing this lift at the covenant for a shoulder problem as we advance through treatment.

So that’ll be for another video. But talking about using your butt muscles today, that’s the most important part. Own grip here, by the way, overhand or underhand, sorry, overhand is what you want to be. So head pumps facing out away from you. And whether your thumbs are next to your fingers are wrapped around the bar doesn’t matter. Just as long as you’re comfortable, I oftentimes will hold like this.

So I’m going to do my baby squat, my knees are coming out, but is going down just a bit. And then in real time, so you can watch this, I’m going to squeeze my butt and shrug up. And you’re just pushing up like that.

Once you get comfortable with the motion, then you can start to go faster, because you know that you can hit your face and knock out a tooth, bump your nose, or drop the bar. So make sure that you slow down at first as you learn this new motion so that you can get all the components right, and get your butt muscles to squeeze your abs to engage your shoulders to shrug so that you’re not messing this up and being dangerous.

If you are going to move a little more slow. That’s totally fine. Just make sure you use all the muscles that I’m talking about here. And just a side note about rotator cuff problems, because that’s the big scare with doing these kinds of overhead lifts is that you’re going to tear your rotator cuff. That’s why doctors oftentimes tell you just stay away from overhead lifts don’t pick up anything overhead.

In the short term. That’s great advice because not lifting up overhead allows you to not use those tissues so that they reduce an irritation and feel better. But what you miss out on is strengthening those tissues so that they get stronger and heal and are farther away from tearing so they can prevent a terror surgery down the line.

I’ve got a video that explains exactly how rotator cuffs healed naturally without surgery. And just to give you the spoiler you can I’ll tell you exactly how to go check out that video. It’s in the link.

If you thought this video was helpful for you, and you’re dealing with a shoulder problem, you’re thinking that you might need some help from us that’ll El Paso Manual Physical Therapy to make sure that you don’t have a rotator cuff tear or impingement problem or any other sort of shoulder problem.

Arthritis is a common one as well. As you age, if you’re out there and you lift weights, maybe you’re a crossfitter you’ve been lifting weights with a trainer, you want to be able to do overhead lifts, and you’re just unsure about how to proceed because you’re having some shoulder pain, we can definitely help you out. I want you to scroll down to the bottom of the page here and find the button that says requested discovery visit.

It’s a 20 minute visit with the specialist physical therapist will take a look at your problem diagnose it, tell you why it’s there, what the root of the problem is, give you some tips about what to do and what not to do. Let you ask all the questions you need. And if you choose to get help from us, then we’ll talk about developing a plan to fix the problem for the long term.

All the clients who have shoulder problems, we’re getting into the lift a little bit of weight, whether they’re into weightlifting or not, we need a little bit of weight lifting to happen to prevent it. And oftentimes your clients are coming to us they’ve seen doctors, they’ve had injections in the shoulders and they’re saying to us, my doctor said not to lift anything up overhead.

And we always tell them Well, that’s a doctor’s advice, or they’re Specialists of medicine or they’re helping you out as best we can with what they know. But here it’ll pass. So manual physical therapy. Our specialty is exactly this. We’re going to teach you how to prevent that problem from getting worse. And part of what needs to happen is we got to strengthen the tissues in the area safely.

So that’s what we’ll teach Here in the clinic, we also have to look at all the hands on parts, we have to make sure the ball and socket joint is alive properly, that it’s moving correctly that all the other muscles, ligaments, Bursa, nerves, all the other components in the shoulder are healthy, we take a good look at all that stuff, we have to look at the joints nearby as well, the collarbone, the neck, all the other muscles that attach from the neck to the shoulder.

There are many factors to look at. We go in depth in our examination in our discovery visit so that we can make sure that we give you all the details we can. So I encourage you to request one of those discovery visits, we only have a limited amount of those available each week. He’s requested right away so that you can get the help that you need in solving this problem for the long term. I hope that we can be a part of your success story real soon. Have a wonderful day.